You poor poor poor man. I feel your pain.

I cant think of any specific pages/sites, but I would actively seek out other seasoned experts in this design field and ask them their objective opinions on music on sites. If you get it, in writing that its complete BS then you can take other peoples opinions to your boss.

Failing that you can test the music version and non-music versions side by side and look at things like abandonment. However im guessing your boss hasnt budgeted for a decent web analytics system ;)

good luck.

On 15:30:04 29 April 2005 PaulAlburquerqueGailey wrote:

background music playing on the homepage?

This may seem a tad early 90´s but my MD has a penchant for this and unfortunately the design of the webpage is being relegated to personal whims and visual effects without any regard for commercial design and best practice.

Can anyone, useability experts included, point me to evidence based study for/against music on the home page, irrespective of a mute button ?

The site is an overseas property resort, not music related in anyway.

i see no advantages, infact only disadvantages to including music on the home page, irrespective of the tune, but am keen to back up internal argument with evidence. 

The site is also following that obsession with a flash and non flash version. I suspect this may add anything upto to 20% additional design costs for a mid level flash site with ensuing CMS issues, SEO to boot.

I would also be keen for opinions of principal navigation items placed at the base of the page under large images, as opposed to the conventional location on the left or top.

Not sure if it's too late for this but a technique I often use in similar situations is 'why don't we get the core site developed, functionality etc and leave bells and whistles to phase 2'. Phase 2 never really arrives as other priorities take over once a site is live - ensuring it's visible in search engines, looking at other ways to drive traffic to the site and deliver a sound customer experience, measuring drop-off points and conversion rates from first-view to sale etc etc.

Once this all starts, the music fluffery can hopefully take a back seat. Have to say though, it's not 100% guaranteed. Have had similar 'discussions' with allegedly senior people and have had to develop the 200k pre-home page with music and guff despite my protests. One that's not going to make it to the portfolio and is sitting in the folder marked 'one for experience'.

I agree with the other guys posts though - getting in some potential customers and, ensuring your usability questions are worded appropriately, hopefully you can get the result you want. A potential danger of this is that they like it and it's 'a nice tune' and start tapping their feet to the tune of your sinking heart.

On 15:30:04 29 April 2005 PaulAlburquerqueGailey wrote:

Can anyone, useability experts included, point me to evidence based study for/against music on the home page, irrespective of a mute button ?

Jakob Nielsen (www.useit.com) vigorously supports a comment from a reader:

Alistair Nicholson, Principal Consultant with e-strategists, writes:

Those designers that play a sound file without choice immediately a page is displayed lose traffic from every worker in an office situation with an advanced workstation with speakers. If my computer starts playing music, those around me are likely to assume that I am just playing games. At the very least, it lowers the credibility of the information, and in the increasingly common cubicle "farms" is disruptive to those around me. I immediately back out of such a site, and then consider if it seemed so valuable that I should adjust my sound level and re-enter, or just go somewhere else. The situation is quite different when a click is required to fire a sound file off, and I can make a choice.

Jakob's reply: Auditory interfaces differ from visual ones in many ways, including the fact that the ears are "always on," whereas the eyes may be directed elsewhere (not at the screen). This property makes sounds good for alarms and for subtly communicating progress on background tasks. Sound waves also have much further reach than screen images which can be used to interface with users who are in a different part of the room than the computer. All good things that should be employed more in user interfaces.

But these same fundamentals of sound also make it highly annoying and intrusive when played in a multi-person environment. The current use of sound files attached to Web pages typically has very little communicative value and I advise designers to take Alistair Nicholson's comments to heart and think of the poor cubicle-dwellers.

from: http://www.useit.com/alertbox/990530_comments.html